A lot gets made about the hyper-partisanship and division inside of the American electorate, and actually a lot should. It used to be said that while we might disagree about how to get there, we all wanted the same things in the end. That’s not true in 2024. The gap between the guys in the red hats and the ladies in the pink hats is not over what the marginal tax rates should be, we’re literally arguing over national identity these days. Even within the two political parties, the gap between a rural MAGA Republican and a Wall Street Republican, or a Democratic Socialist and a “normy Dem” has grown tremendously large.

I actually disagree with Joe Biden and others that we could look to the lessons of say an Abraham Lincoln or others who dealt with times of great national division in the past, because I think our division is less caused by current events and passions, and more just caused by the natural order of changes that happens in a pluralistic society. Yes, it is certainly true that the continual rise of the internet and the emergence of a super polarizing figure like Donald Trump are both like dumping gasoline onto the fire, but the truth is that we’re a really, really different country than we used to be. These differences are causing our people to come to natural but different conclusions about the kind of country and world that they want.

I want you to continue several data points for a moment when you think about where we’re at:

• In 1916 there were no women voting in the election that sent Woodrow Wilson back to the White House. Even Ronald Reagan was elected by an electorate that was still solidly male driven. In 2024, somewhere between 50.5% and 52.5% of the electorate is expected to be female. Women are now the majority of the electorate. This makes some political issues that used to be more on the back burner much more important than they used to be. The obvious issues we could discuss here would be reproductive rights, childcare costs, and access to contraception, but I think that’s an overly narrow view of what women might care about differently than men. Women bring their own unique perspective to political issues and what matters. Just over a century ago, they did not matter politically, at all.
• We are just at the century mark since the United States closed down Ellis Island, and other legal ports of century that were bringing mostly European immigrants to the United States, looking for a better life. “Immigration on demand” ended at that point, and while we have immigration (legal and illegal) today, the legal barriers to entry have changed dramatically, and where the people are coming from has changed pretty dramatically too. So much of our legal immigration system today is dedicated to skilled and educated labor. So much of our illegal immigration is migration from the southern hemisphere. Many of the descendants of Ellis Island immigration are now third and fourth generation in America (As I am), and feel a dramatic disconnect to the immigrants of today. Immigration and being a melting pot was a major part of American nationalism in the early 1900’s, and it simply is not now.
• We are 95 years removed from the “Stock Market Crash of 1929,” or as we know it now, the beginning of the Great Depression. American standard of living and economic power is dramatically different than it was then, and so are the economic issues that people want addressed. Dust bowls, bread and soup lines, wiped out banks, and other things that were staples of the Depression are now niche problems that only apply to pockets of the American public. Home ownership, credit card debt, and saving for retirement are now some of the bigger issues facing America. The fact today is that the United States is now a super wealthy country, who has the fiat currency for a lot of the world, and our public enjoys a standard of living that even other large, powerful countries cannot extend to most or all of their populations. For all of the talk of the dangers of “China owning so much of our debt,” it’s worth remembering that China needs our middle class to continue to have purchasing power, so we continue to buy all the cheap crap they make. The United States being wealthy though changes the electorate, and what the electorate cares about. In 1932, your income was the top indicator of how you would vote. In 2024, your education level is the top data point indicating political migration among the public. Almost no one was even a college educated voter in 1932. Rich countries can argue over cultural issues, because most of the public isn’t dying of starvation. We’re at that point.
• “Separate but Equal” was legally struck down 70 years ago. We’re about 60 years removed from LBJ signing Civil and Voting Rights legislation that brought Brown and Black voters rights to vote that they never had before. The changes to the electorate since have been profound. Mitt Romney got essentially the same percentage of the white vote in the 2012 Presidential Election that George H.W. Bush got in the 1988 Presidential Election, but Bush won an electoral landslide and Romney lost by 4%. The difference of course was that the 1988 electorate was 90% white and the 2012 electorate was closer to 70% white. I am not a believer in either “demographics are destiny” or “the great replacement theory” that you hear echo from the political reaches of the parties, but I am absolutely certain that changing the demographics of the electorate by that dramatic of an amount will change the issues you’re debating, and raise animosity levels among parts of each group.
• We are now about 30 years removed from the signing of NAFTA. It’s not that NAFTA in and of itself was the policy change that we sometimes make it out to be, but it was the point that American political class members reached the consensus on free trade. The reality is that the hollowing out of American manufacturing had begun basically after World War II and Korea, and many of the factories left in the 1960’s and 70’s looking for cheaper labor markets than we will allow here. The optics though are that we’re about 30ish years after the point where high school educated men lived with the expectation that they could make a middle class living simply by going down to the factory in town and applying for a job. These folks are now 30 years into working in low skill, lower paying jobs. If we want to peel the onion a little further, the high school educated white man in 1975 could make good money through his manual labor, and has not excelled in the era of skilled, educated labor at the same rates that other groups (especially women) have. More and more women are the bread winners at home now. A large portion of these people “left behind” are yearning for times that are gone now, when they were at the apex of the American economy. We could debate the why’s on this all day, but it doesn’t change the result.
• We’re now far enough removed from Bill Clinton’s impeachment and 9/11 that there are voters who weren’t alive for that. In fact, there are voters who have little to no recollection of President Obama’s victory speech in Chicago. These are all politically abstract events now.

Ok, so where does this all leave us? Just over a century ago, white men made up virtually the entire electorate. They also earned an overwhelming share of the money in America. That is not the case anymore. Because other people now have political and economic power, other issues are now introduced to our national debate. These new issues have different meanings to the different groups in the electorate. Their very existence are going to divide some people. It is an unfortunate feature of human nature.

Stepping back from the ledge though for a moment, a less homogeneous electorate is simply going to have more perspectives and different policy needs. In a world where resources are a thing to be fought over, that is going to cause competition, and therefore division. Groups that see their position as improving due to those changes are going to view the changes differently than groups who aren’t. If politics is but a means to the end of getting what you need, obviously self interest is a big motivator in electoral behavior.

This is not at all like Abraham Lincoln’s time, even if the divisions are similar in intensity. This is not a fight about a policy decision and its immoral outcomes (slavery, to be clear). This is not a fight about whether a war is just or not. Our divisions now are driven by a rather simple reality- there are more seats at the table. This does not make diversity or pluralism a bad thing. Quite the opposite could be said as true, actually. It does mean that we have to stop asking “what’s the matter with Kansas,” and realize American society is divided by a lot more than their income levels in 2024. Encouraging a “class struggle” as a means to fix societal ailments is yesterday’s political solution.